Final Fantasy 7 Remake preview – they actually went and did it, the mad lads

cre: Final Fantasy 7 Remake preview – they actually went and did it, the mad lads

Final Fantasy 7 means so much to me.

He came out at a time when I needed a distraction. I had never connected to a story in a video game before and this bizarre story of alien gods and eco-terrorists grabbed me, for some reason. He also looked amazing at the time. I remember my dad coming to my room just to see the cutscenes – it was the first game I owned that he took such an active interest in.

While playing the first disc, a random and real attack changed our lives forever. Final Fantasy 7 helped me and my dad reconnect afterwards.

I remember hitting a wall – literally a wall, in the form of that bastard wall boss in the Temple of the Ancients. I just couldn’t beat him. I went out one day and came home to find my dad playing it. He had been circling the dungeon for hours, letting the clock hands knock him down before coming back up. Grind it. My characters were much more powerful and I was finally able to beat the thing. He didn’t even try the boss because he knew I wouldn’t want to miss the story.

When I finally reached the end of the game, my television turned off, just as I brought Sephiroth into his second phase. I had been trying to get this far all day. My dad went into the attic and found an old monitor, hooked me up, and I finished the game on it.

I still feel emotion when I hear the music because it brings me back to that place in time. This part of my childhood was mostly awful, but the music in Final Fantasy 7 gives me a deep longing, reminding me of fleeting good times. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

This deep connection to a medium complicates things when trying to look at Final Fantasy 7 Remake through an unbiased lens. But from what I’ve played so far, it might live up to my high expectations.

At E3, I was first shown a hands-on demo of the opening section, the bombardment performed on the Mako Reactor. Beat for beat, it’s exactly the same as the original. The dialogue is changed to match modern standards, but Cloud still rocks dramatically off the top of the steam train like he’s the coolest asshole alive, Jessie still kicks a soldier the exact same way. Cloud remains a grumpy bastard and Barret is still a goofball. Modern performance capture techniques bring these moments to life like never before. It feels like a proper and complete new Final Fantasy game, despite being such a faithful recreation.

After the short opening, we’re straight into combat which is now a hybrid system of real-time inputs and command. You manually smash enemies with your buster sword, each hit slashing them, knocking them back, or knocking them into the air. When you attack, you charge up the ATB gauge which can be spent on magic (you also need MP for that) and abilities like Brave. You also need ATB to use items, so you can’t just buy 99 Mega Elixir and play them. When you bring up the command menu, it’s like classic Final Fantasy 7: time almost slows to a pause, and you can flick through the menu to choose an entry.

You can also switch between party members, which is essential as you need to make the most of the ATB gauges which all charge at different rates. Not only that, but Cloud can’t easily hit flying enemies, although Barret can with his arm cannon. Then there are the nuances around magic use and enemy weaknesses. You can also maintain your guard to reduce incoming damage or manually dodge big attacks. It’s like you’re playing the characters we’d only see in the cutscenes of the original.

On top of all that, there’s a new stagger mechanic that works the same way it did in Final Fantasy 13. If you keep attacking enemies and using their weaknesses against them, you’ll end up filling up the stagger meter, they are incapacitated and open for additional damage for a limited time. The strategy here is to make sure you’re fully stocked when they’re staggered so you can make the most of that window. Characters also have different attack modes: for Cloud, Operator Mode is his standard stance, while Punisher Mode slows him down, raises his sword into an attack stance, and allows you to deal more damage at the expense of movement speed.

The layout of the mako reactor is almost exactly as you remember it, except there are extra pieces where the screens used to fit together, which is now a continuous, seamless thing. As you move through these areas, the action transitions into seamless cutscenes, once again moving smoothly and putting you back in the action.

Some dialogue is a bit hammered out, but it feels like a huge improvement over the original, even if the original text still exudes an eerie charm. At one point, Barret said, “While you’re sleeping, while you’re eating, while you’re shitting, he’s there sucking Mako. I can hear the planet screaming in pain.

“Do you really hear that? The cloud responds.

“Yeah,” Barret replies.

“Get help,” Cloud replies deadpan.

Barret outruns Cloud at every opportunity. Cloud is a dick for everyone. I can’t wait to see these characters grow beyond that hubris again. Even in combat, their personalities clash, with Barret saying, “That was something else,” at the climax of a fight, while Cloud responds, “That? It was nothing…”

In my practice, I have to face the Boss Scorpion. It’s multi-layered, tactical, and spectacle-packed combat. Honestly, I don’t know how Square Enix plans to maintain this level of quality for the entire two Blu-ray discs. But the developer knows how much this game means to everyone – there’s a reason it took them so long to cave in and do the thing, after all – and so far it’s exceeded my lofty expectations. , taking me back to those fleeting moments when nothing else mattered.

source: gameplaytrick.com -

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